Linking Lichen and Urban Landscapes

After completing this unit, you should be able to

• describe how bioindicator organisms can be used to assess land-use change, air pollution and other environmental impacts.
• describe how data gathered from multiple large-scale monitoring efforts (e.g. National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), National Land Cover Data (NLCD), air quality (US EPA)) can be combined to investigate ecological questions at different spatial scales.
• use insights from large-scale monitoring efforts to formulate a hypotheses at a local scale.
• describe how abiotic and biotic factors impact the presence, abundance and distribution of lichen on local and regional scales.
• describe how to make abiotic and biotic measurements in a field setting.
• describe different methods for species identification and morpho-species classification.

In this unit we will explore Urban Ecology. Specifically we will take a look at how abiotic and biotic factors impact the presence, abundance, and distribution of lichens in diverse landscapes at various scales.

Acknowledgements

This Unit is based on the Lichen EREN module and contains modified versions of their distributed materials.